Succotash Shut-In

Succotash Epi162: Wrappin' It Up Live

Succotash, the Comedy Soundcast Soundcast, was launched in 2011 with the idea of promoting comedy soundcasts in what was then a marketplace still trying to find its way. By featuring short clips of shows being produced by funny folks both known and unknown, we like to feel that we maybe had a little tiny, eeny weeny, itsy bitsy bit to do with helping to ignite the torch of soundcasts across the globe! (But then we've always had a rather high opinion of ourselves...)

Original show host and executive producer Marc Hershon, along with booth announcer Bill Heywatt, engineer/producer Joe Paulino, associate producer Tyson Saner, musical director Scott Carvey, and booth assistant Kenny Durgis have kept the flame alive o'er these many years. In 2018, Hershon abandoned the host chair and anointed Saner to the position, with nary a notice from the legions of listeners. Typical.

Hey, reader. It’s me, Marc
Hershon, the host and executive producer for Succotash,
the Comedy Soundcast Soundcast. In this installment, I'm bringing
you the show we recorded live this past weekend at the 17th
Annual San Francisco Sketchfest in just a
moment.

It's a fun episode, featuring a
couple of my favorite past guests: Matt Weinhold,
of the Monster Party soundcast, and
Mark Pitta, of the late After Hours soundcast. (Weirdly,
both of these guys were former roommates of mine at one time, which
had nothing to do with them both being booked here. Or did it?)This
is epi 162 and it’s going to be the last installment of
Succotash for a while or maybe forever.

We also had a surprise third
guest who was in the audience: Josh Gilliland,
host of the Legal Geeks soundcast, who was tagging along
with Matt. Turns out that Josh is the brother of another
past guest of our show, Gabriel Diani, and I was
delighted to invite him up to join us.

And, although he was unable to
join us live due to being out in Hawaii dodging a mythological
missile, we were about able to feature our final Burst
O' Durst featuring Will Durst, our
resident political comedian's predictions for the coming
year.

Our announcer, Bill
Heywatt, was in his glory and shares a tale of radioactive
frogs in addition to handing the emcee chores and reading a
commercial for the new #MeToo Ladies Trousers for Men from our
sponsor, Henderson's Pants.

As you'll hear in this
installment, this is to be the LAST episode of Succotash,
for at least a while or forever, I'm not exactly
sure.

We’re taking this break or hiatus
or vacation or holiday or whatever you want to call it just a few
months shy of our 7th anniversary in Soundcastland. Whether you’re
a longtime listener or you just found us, I want to thank you for
listening and supporting Succotash.

When I started doing this show
with my producer, Joe Paulino, in his Studio P – the Home of the
Hit – here in Sausalito, California, I really didn’t think about it
lasting for any particular length of time. My original concept was
to create a comedy soundcast that would serve to promote other
people’s comedy shows, and to spread the word about the amazing
entertainment value of soundcasts in general.

I think we
succeeded.

When we started, barely 15% of
American had even heard of soundcasts, or podcasts as they used to
be known, let alone regularly downloaded and listened to them. And
there were about 50,000 shows out there. Now the number of regular
listeners is over 40% and there are more than 300,000 soundcasts
available, featuring every genre of which you could think.

Comedy soundcasts, and networks
carrying them, have proliferated so fast that we kind of can’t keep
up by sampling the eight or ten we could do in our show. And I’ve
had more and more people asking me if featuring those shows without
explicit permission is even legal. Frankly, I don’t know. Since
we’re not profiting by that content – we’re never had any sponsor
besides Henderson’s Pants and they don’t ever pay us – we’re more
like a entertainment news program which would, at least in my
scanty understanding of the law, constitute fair
use.

So we’re going to wind things
down for a bit. I may bring Succotash back as it has been, or with
some minor changes, in a bit. I may release some special episodes
from time to time which would likely be interviews with comics or
soundcasters or actors or what have you. And I’m definitely cooking
up some new soundcast ideas.

I’ll still be reviewing shows for
Splitsider.com and I will likely get back to doing my reviews for
HuffPost as well. And if you want to reach out to me for any
reason, I’m still around. The marc@succotashshow.com email will
still go through. And our site will stay up as well. Just don’t
expect to be bombarded with the number of tweets we normally put
out.

Thanks again for listening. I’ve
enjoyed doing this show for the past seven years and I’ve loved
getting to interact with you on whatever basis that’s been, even if
you’ve only ever listened and we have not exchanged a single
word.

(Stay tuned after the end of the
live show, as I have one final Cavalcade of Gratitude where I thank
some recent retweeters as well as some folks who have been around
supporting this show for a lot of our run. I'm sure I missed a ton
of people in that rundown and for that, my sincere
apologies.)

All right. Let’s get on with the
(final) show, recorded live at S.F. Sketchfest 2018!